New Fiction

This one has been rejected by a half-dozen different publishers. In fact, I got the title for my upcoming book (Unclear!) from one of their rejection letters.

I like it. It's weird and kind of makes me mad. 

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"Letter from Tetiaroa"

Dear Lindsay, 

Tetiaroa is forty miles north of Tahiti. You knew that. It was on page fifty-three of your diary. 

I arrived here on your boat. I stole it from Big Sur. Did you notice?

I hired help and paid them to sail me here and then take the boat back to Tahiti. They left me here with the lifeboat. Now the lifeboat is shelter. I turned it over on the beach and I lie beneath it at night.  

NEVER is what you said. 

What about our names? What about high school? We are both eighteen and born on the same day. I did not want to marry you. I did not even want to kiss you. 

Yesterday I wrote your last word to me in the sand. I took driftwood and palm leaves and organic trash from the jungle undergrowth and made letters on the beach. 

(Remember when we wrote words with rocks on the beach? When we stopped along the Pacific Coast Highway?)

Perhaps a satellite will take my picture. Perhaps you will see the photo on the internet. Perhaps you will see me lying beneath the letters. I will have a white square on my chest, the only skin without sunburn. The square will be from holding your diary while I lie stupefied in the sun.

With ash from my bonfires I will write another word on my chest. It will be my word. You will never see it.

Remember the Taurus Diner? You do. It is in your diary. The word in your mind that time was not NEVER. I will write that word on my chest.

ALWAYS love, 

Lindsay